Parents want child with peanut allergy removed from school

As more kids are diagnosed with food allergies, more schools are faced with figuring out how to deal with students who require a special environment. Should schools be expected to inconvenience all students when only one of them has a severe peanut allergy? This debate is currently playing out at a school in Florida.

Parents in Edgewater, Fl., protest a public school’s extraordinary efforts to create a peanut-free environment.

A 6-year-old girl at a school in Florida has a peanut allergy so severe that she could have a reaction if she were to breath traces of nut dust in the air. Her elementary school in Edgewater, Fl., has taken extraordinary measures to accommodate her.

All students are now required to wash their hands and rinse out their mouths before stepping inside the classroom. Desks must be regularly wiped down with Clorox wipes. School administrators have banned all peanut products and snacks are no longer allowed in the class. Earlier this month, a peanut-sniffing dog walked through the school to make sure everyone is following the rules.

The school is legally obligated to take these safety precautions because of the Federal Disabilities Act, according to Nancy Wait, the the spokeswoman for Volusia County Schools.

“It would be the same thing as putting a handicap ramp for a student that is physically disabled. The only difference with this is that is affects other students,” Wait told FoxNews.com.

A group of parents are outraged by the new requirements and protested outside the school holding signs emblazoned with phrases expressing their frustration: “What’s next? Where does this end?” Parents feel that the new requirements are taking up to 30 minute out of the students’ school day. They are asking the district to require that the girl with the allergies be home-schooled.

The girl and her family are deeply hurt by the protests. “We’ve fought very hard to put certain things in place to keep her alive in school,” David Bailey, the father of the student with the allergy, told My Fox Orlando. “She’s already a cast-out. She can’t do most things kids can do.”

Food allergies in children on the rise

Some 3 million children have food allergies, most commonly to peanuts, seafood, eggs, milk, and soy. The prevalence in kids has risen 18 percent in the past 10 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As more children are diagnosed with allergies, more schools are faced with figuring out how to deal with students requiring special treatment. Some schools adopt nut bans, while others implement less strict rules, for example, allowing peanut butter sandwiches while creating nut-free tables where students with allergies can eat snack and lunch.

Just how far a school should go to protect a child with a food allergy is a matter of debate.

Some experts feel that it’s absolutely necessary to do everything possible for a child who could have a life-threatening reaction by simply touching someone who ate peanuts. Schools are often forced to take this side in order to protect themselves from lawsuits.

Other medical experts believe that doctors are over-diagnosing food allergies. They also think that nut bans are an over-reaction to the magnitude of the threat.

Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School, presents some compelling stats backing up this argument in a 2008 story for the British Medical Journal:

Serious allergic reactions to foods cause just 2,000 hospitalizations a year (out of more than 30 million hospitalizations nationwide). And only 150 people (children and adults) die each year from all food allergies combined. Compare that number with the 50 people who die each year from bee stings, the 100 who die from lightning strikes, and the 45,000 who die in motor vehicle collisions. Or compare it with the 10,000 hospitalizations of children each year for traumatic brain injuries acquired during sports or the 2,000 who drown or the roughly 1300 who die from gun accidents.

Yes, these numbers are convincing and make nut bans seem silly, but when you have a parent who has been told by a doctor that her child might die from eating peanuts that 150 number still seems high.